It’s raining dead

Residents of an Ottawa neighbourhood say a nearby crematorium has made their lives so miserable there are times they won’t step outside or open their windows. The problem, according to Dawn Lynch, whose house is about 250 metres from the crematorium, is the soot that rains down on the neighbourhood every time the crematorium springs into action. "It makes you feel like you’re breathing in the remnants of a dead body," she says. Lynch’s neighbour, Mike Ball, says "thick smoke" comes out of the building at the Hope Cemetery as often as "two or three times a day—it depends." Benoit Bariteau, the director of cemetaries for the Catholic Archdiocese of Ottawa, says Hope Crematorium’s permits are in order and that there isn’t much he can do about the soot or the smell. "I don’t want to push back and to say it’s fun for people to have a crematorium in their backyard," he says, "but, you know, at the same time it’s a reality and it’s very, very controlled."

CBC News